


Mother Told Me, Yes, She Told Me

by maplemood



Series: girl!Peter [6]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Female Friendship, Female Peter Quill, Gen, Protective Gamora (Marvel), Protectiveness, Rule 63, Sibling Rivalry, Sister-Sister Relationship, Sisters, Unconventional Families, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence, despite her best efforts, gamora pov, girl!Peter - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-01-30 23:30:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12663678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemood/pseuds/maplemood
Summary: (I'd meet girls like you)In the end, only Gamora is left.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can hardly believe it, but we're moving into Vol. 1 territory! It's been a little while--hopefully this is worth the wait.

In the end, only Gamora is left. She prefers it this way. She’s lost her mother and father, her aunts and uncles. Every single one of her squealing, toddling cousins. She’s lost her home, her bed; her dreams are filled with screams, growing ever louder, and the squish of pulped brains and bone—this is her lot from now on. She’d rather carry it alone.

But the end is a cold gray room, lined wall to wall with waiting beds. Before the week is up, Gamora’s gained a brother and a sister.

“Watch them carefully,” Thanos rumbles, his smile full of heat. Empty of warmth. “They are not your equals.”

He leaves, locking the door behind him. The very second Thanos’s footsteps fade, Gamora’s new brother throws himself on top of her.

He wants her bed. It takes Gamora a second to realize this; another second to remember that she chose this cot because it’s closest to the window, to freedom and fresh air, and she’s not giving it up. So she clamps her teeth around the boy’s ear, pulls until she feels something rip, and then shoves him off her, over the edge.

The boy’s skull cracks against the slabbed stone floor. He lies there, gasping until he can gulp, gulping until he can breathe. He sucks down air like a glutton, his chest ballooning with it. His eyes gape up—the light drains from them all at once, and he begins to howl.

Huddled in a corner, so small that they’d both forgotten her, Gamora’s sister starts howling, too.

No. Gamora wipes her lips. Neither of these _children_ is her equal.

See, though.

They are only children.

And her sister is so very small.

Gamora steps over the boy to reach her, kicking his side as she does. Her sister is about the age of her youngest cousin; old enough to walk and talk. Too young to be good at either. She’s sitting now, in nothing but a damp diaper, her face sopping and her mouth wide open, wailing. Globs of drool string down her chin, onto her belly.

 _You’ll regret this_ , Gamora reminds herself.

Her sister shudders, scooting even deeper into the corner. Suddenly she thinks better of it, and flings out her arms.

“Up,” she screeches. “ _Up_!”

Gamora picks her up.

“Quiet!” She bounces the little girl on her hip, too hard. Is there a way to hold something without touching it? She can’t stand the scratching, sticky fingers. The rub of skin that somehow smells as soft and new as her cousins’. “Shh! Shh!”

It doesn’t do any good. Finally, in desperation, she whirls on the boy, kicks him again, and snarls, “What’s her name?”

He wheezes. Eyes blank. Yellow blood dribbles down his neck, into the floor that sucks it up like a sponge.

“Tell me or I’ll stomp your skull in.”

A flicker. “Don’t know.”

Rolling her eyes, Gamora steps back over him. She settles onto her bed, cross-legged, while the brother who’ll never truly be her brother (and who won’t last the week; she knows this already) peels himself off the floor.

“Why?” His voice is as wet and muddled by spit as her nameless sister’s. “Why’d you have to pick her?”

“I didn’t pick anybody.”

“She’s too little,” he says mournfully. “He’ll kill her first.”

The bald, half-naked thing in her lap howls louder than before. Gamora wonders if it’s a child at all; maybe Thanos sent in a decoy to drive her crazy before their training even starts. Synthskin and wires wrapped around a voice box. No off switch.

The boy cups a hand over his tattered ear. “Make her stop,” he whimpers. “ _Make her stop_.”

+

In the end—another end, years on—Gamora meets a thief who calls herself Star-Lord.

Petra Quill is the idiot’s real name, though for some gods-unknown reason she insists on going by Pete. Gamora doesn’t learn this until they’re locked away in the Kyln, and she learns precious little else after they’ve blasted their way out of the Kyln. Behind her grins and running tally of one night stands, Quill’s a closed book on anything that matters.

There’s some hidden edge to her, still. It snags at Gamora. She doesn’t understand why until sleep cycle on the way to Knowhere, when Quill switches her ship to autopilot but refuses to rest. She insists Gamora take her bed.

“Such as it is,” Gamora snaps. The pile of stained blankets and pillows nestled in the _Willis_ ’s cargo hold reminds her of a nest.

“Hoo boy.” Quill rolls her eyes. “Never expected a daughter of Thanos to be so picky.”

Gamora would say that she’s earned the right to be particular by the skin of her teeth, if Quill’s constant jabs meant anything to her. Which they do not.

“What, you think I’m going to boot you out the airlock once you fall asleep? Come on, princess.”

Nothing at all.

“You’d rip off my head if I tried. I’m not that stupid.” The other woman yawns, rolling out the cracks in her neck. Her eyes stay fixed on Gamora, and sharp as laser points. “Just thought you could use some shut eye. Whatever.”

Well. She’s not wrong, if still, indeed, that stupid. “If only your brain ran as quickly as your mouth,” Gamora says tartly.

“If my brain ran as fast as my mouth I’d be off on my lonesome with that orb,” Quill says, lightly and with a grin, as if that grin cancels out the sharpness. She doesn’t turn her back on Gamora until she’s halfway up the ladder and out of the hold. “Sweet dreams.”

As soon as Quill’s gone, Gamora kicks the mustiest pillow aside. Something rattles against the floor as she does. A small metal box, Terran make by the look of it, sunny yellow and splattered with fat pastel creatures swinging from seasick rainbows.

“Oh, gods.” It is a nest.

Gamora settles in anyway. She’ll be no help to herself exhausted. Neither will Quill, and the happy thought that by the time they reach Knowhere the thief will be one night closer to losing her head from sleep deprivation lulls Gamora into an uneasy doze.

“Okay, I’m just grabbing a shirt, don’t— _Easy_!”

She’s shaking. Quill is too, leaning away from the knifepoint, hands thrown up. The Terran lets out a deep, shuddering breath.

“You should know,” she says, unsteady but refusing to back away, “I don’t put up with death threats on my own ship. Sorry, princess. Not that kind of girl.”

She means it. Under the quivering, Quill’s nothing but steel. Fatigue wells up in Gamora, seeping through her bones. They must be halfway to Knowhere. It’s too late for this fight. She slides the knife (which she doesn’t remember grabbing—the weapons are welded to her by now, almost flesh and blood) into her boot.

Quill lowers her hands. Gamora notices that she’s shed her jacket and her shirt is splattered with dark, oily stains.

“I am Groot already spilled something in the engine room.”

She hasn’t been startled like this in years; it’s a shame, and, frankly, a wonder that Gamora was startled at all. “And?” she snaps, hoarse from sleep. “What would you have me do?”

Another smirk. “Do the laundry like a good little wifey? Good Lord. Just pass me that box, will you?”

 _I could pull your stomach up through your throat_ , Gamora muses, sending a battered cardboard box on its way with one kick. She watches, too tired to stay on edge, as Quill catches the box, roots through it for a clean shirt, and strips off her stained one.

_Why don’t I?_

The hold’s dim. In what light there is Quill’s pale skin looks bluish. Spattered with freckles, seamed with scars. Stretched over lean planes of muscle. She’s no delicate flower, and no great beauty, either, and yet…

_Answer me that._

There’s softness underneath it all. A different sort of delicacy.

“Oh, yeah. Pass me that tin, too.”

Gamora does not.

“Fine, fine.” Quill scoops up the yellow tin one-handed, tugging the hem of her new shirt down with the other. “Bastards took my hairpins.”

Then she knows. An awful helplessness replaces Gamora’s exhaustion. This can’t happen again. She can’t bear it.

“…I mean, I could’ve jimmied my way out with just one of these babies, so they had a point…”

There’s no reason to linger, especially not when a sentient tree is wreaking havoc in the engine room. Anything else Gamora would’ve chalked up to boredom or even gratitude, but if Quill is desperate enough for conversation to bring up hairpins…

Gods. She really should have killed her.  

“…How’s a girl supposed to survive without ‘em?” Fixing her lopsided braids into an even more lopsided crown atop her head, the thief offers Gamora a crooked grin. In that grin, Gamora sees longing, barely covered up, for anyone— _any_ one—to be close with. It reminds Gamora of someone much younger.

She grinds her teeth.

It reminds her very much of her sister.

+

_Watch them carefully._

Thanos locks the door behind him.

_They are not your equals._

It stays locked for seven days.

The black stone floor soaks up their blood when they fight. The bulging stone walls swirl three times a day, molding into ledges. On the ledges there’ll be bowls of soup—three—and a loaf of bread—one, to be fought and screamed and cried over.

It’s never Gamora who does the crying. It’s never Gamora who goes hungry. And, through some fluke, some mistake that she’ll always make up for tomorrow, her sister does not go hungry either.

Except that first time. When the Brat spits out the mouthful Gamora coaxes into her. (She calls her the Brat now, or the Thing, or nothing. Most days it’s nothing because her sister is nothing. Nothing but a toddling mouth that screams and screams.) She smashes her fists into the bowl. She splatters Gamora with steaming broth. Then—what a surprise—she bawls in her face.

Gamora stands up. Kicks the bowl out of the way.

The Brat doesn’t even flinch.

“Maybe this is a test,” their brother suggests between slurps. “And we’re supposed to kill her.”

Gamora bends at the waist. She bends until the Brat sees nothing but her face. Until the Brat’s shrieking up at her; all she sees is the slick spit on her sister’s teeth and the pink shine of her throat. She grinds her teeth and balls her fists and screams back, not a shriek but a _scream._ It goes on. And on. It leaves her throat raw for the rest of the day.

It’s the kind of scream that silences.

Afterwards Gamora straightens. She picks the Brat’s bowl up and hurls it against the wall.

“You hold her down and I’ll—”

“If you kill her,” says Gamora, without turning around, “I’ll kill you.”

That night she lies, wide awake and stiff as a board, under her blanket. She watches her brother’s shadow flicker across the wall, black on black. He can’t lie down to sleep because of his ear. So he doesn’t sleep at all.

Something tugs at her blankets.

“Go away,” Gamora whispers, refusing to look.

The tugging turns into yanking.

She yanks back. “I hate you.”

There’s a soft plopping sound, followed by angry snuffling.

 _The Brat,_ Gamora thinks. _The Thing. Nothing, nothing_.

She’s about to roll over and block her ears with her pillow when the snuffles turn to soft sobs. Whimpers more than anything else. Gamora’s stomach goes cold as she realizes that the Brat is _trying_ to be quiet.

She finally sticks her head over the edge of the cot. Her sister has a corner of Gamora’s blanket balled in her two fists and she’s sitting there, her face twisted and furious while she sobs almost silently. Tears drip off her chin, falling into the creases of her wrists and arms. Gamora has never seen anything so hopeless.

“I still hate you,” she hisses.

The Brat crawls out of Gamora’s arms as soon as she’s under the blanket but burrows into her side, all elbows and toes. It’s like bedding down with a bog lizard—one who snorts and oozes all night. Still board-stiff, Gamora dozes, thinking of her cousins. She lets her memories paint them puffy and candy-sweet. They were nothing like this thing. No baby alive, in this galaxy or any other, is like this thing. She still half-suspects it is not an actual baby. Maybe their brother is right—maybe they are supposed to kill it.

Tiny, rapid breaths tickle her side.

It wouldn’t be easy. It would be…doable.

The Brat flinches, moaning in her sleep. She flings one pudgy arm across Gamora’s stomach.

No.

It wouldn’t.

Gamora realizes, in a twist of freezing-cold, raging-hot fury, that there are still things she will not do. After everything. Her father’s broken skull. Her mother’s streaming blood. Her cousins’—

“I hate you,” she tells the sleeping baby. Again. Again. As if the words will make it so. “I wish you were never _born_.”

But in the dark, Gamora reaches out. In the dark, she finds the Brat’s clenched, gummy fingers, and in the dark she covers them with her own.

+

Here is the end. Another end, certainly. The last end, probably (probably, probably; since the first time she almost died Gamora can never be certain). No breath, no air, no light—the light in her sister’s eyes, she _remembers_ that, through the cold, the vacuum, the pain—

The light in her eyes. The grasp of her warm hands.

 _You bitch_ , the voice inside her screams, _I saved you_. Time after time, so many times— _I raised you_.

This is it. All the thanks she gets.

The stars are not fire. They are nothing, emptiness; she is nothing. She can’t breathe shecan’tbreathe—

_Best that it was you._

_It was always going to be you._

Before arms wrap around her. Before she’s squeezed to someone else’s chest, given someone else’s breath. Before she’s lit afire in the glare of a Ravager ship, Gamora does not remember her cousins, her mother, or her father. She doesn’t remember her brother with the missing ear, or the honorless thief cradling her in the black. She remembers her sister. After all, in the end, there was no one else.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, guys, I didn't plan for such a long wait between updates and I apologize. Basically, finals happened and I didn't have nearly enough time to work on all my fics. But now finals are over and the next chapter should come up much more quickly. Also, I really did try to fit this story into just two chapters, but Pete and Gamora and Yondu and Nebula weren't having it. 
> 
> (Oh, and just in case anyone's curious, I picture Gamora to be around 10-12 years old in her scenes with Nebula.)

The first words she hears: “Welcome home, Pete.”

 _I am not Pete_ , Gamora thinks, hazy in the air, the oxygen that’s too much after nothingness and the thin wheeze of the thief’s mask. It’s swelling in her lungs. Too tight. It’ll burst them like balloons.

 _I am not welcome,_ she thinks.

 _I am not home_.

“Oh,” says the voice on top of her. Directly on top; it has weight. Substance. Spit that flecks her cheeks. “Suck my cock, Kraglin.”

“Got one of those now, have you?” This voice sounds better than the other two. Almost melodious.

“You too, perv.” The weight eases off Gamora a little. “You can all suck my big…huge…nonexistent…”

Quick as that it collapses back over her, light as a sack of bricks. Breath punches out of Gamora. So much for excess oxygen.

“…cock…”

+

On the seventh day the door opens. It swings on creaking hinges (hinges meant to creak), slow enough that they notice, fast enough that there’s no time to brace themselves, no time to be brave. Gamora scrabbles off her bed, hair sleep-mussed, mouth clotted and sour. The Brat clings to her side like a monkey.

They wait.

“Gam,” her sister whispers, trembling. Gamora’s stomach swirls molten-hot; at the same time she has to lock every muscle in her body to stop herself from shaking the Brat, the tiny idiot who after all these days still doesn’t know.

“Quiet!”

 _Do you want to die?_ she’s asked her. Every morning. Glaring until the Brat either drops her eyes or shakes her head. _Good. Then we are not friends_.  

They push through the door, clicking amongst themselves while their plates of black armour scrape over the black floor like beetles’ shells. Gamora relaxes. The Brat trembles harder. A stream of hot piss soaks through her diaper and trickles down Gamora’s side.

She barely notices. _Not him_ , Gamora is too busy chanting in her head like a prayer. _It’s not him, not him_. Thanos’s guards could come for any of them, true, but Thanos himself...he will only come for her. And he will only come when he needs to. No need now, so there’s still time. Time enough for her.

Not for her brother.

He screams when the guards grasp for his wrists. He sobs when they drag him off his cot, toward the door. “Give me a chance!”

As if he’s owed one.

“I can do it, I can do it, I can do it!”

The Brat is crying again. Gamora’s stomach snakes its way up her throat, still molten.

“I can do it,” their brother wails. He doesn’t fight, not even when one of the guards yanks him sideways, bashing his torn ear on the doorframe. He screams again, higher than the Brat, and blood trickles down his neck, but he doesn’t fight.

Gamora almost tells him. She almost screams, _So do it! Fight!_

_This is the test._

This _is_ the test, so she doesn’t.

All the same, Gamora feels herself moving. Across the floor, feet sure though she’s shaking. She comes so close to the guards that the Brat lets out a choked gurgle, something caught between a screech and a sob, and buries her face in the curve of Gamora’s neck.

“Be careful.”

One of the guards turns its blank-masked toward her. Beneath the grill of the mouthpiece filaments twitch and click. They chitter at her.

Gamora cups her free hand over the Brat’s head to hide its trembling. “He hurt his ear,” she says. “Be careful with it.”

Her brother raises his head. He looks at her, and this is the look Gamora will make herself forget, with its terror and longing all swirled together in sweat and blood and snot, the look of what she could have become.

He smiles, gentle at the end. “Too late.”

After they’ve gone, Gamora collapses back onto her cot. She settles the Brat on her chest, then lies there, tracing her fingers over the curve of her sister’s skull, until they are breathing in rhythm. Deeply. Slowly.

“It’s only you and me.” Gamora feels for the soft down, almost transparent, on the crown of the Brat’s head. “We have to be careful. We aren’t friends.” She rocks up on her elbows. “Do you hear me? We’re still not friends.”

The Brat doesn’t answer.

+

Years later--minutes later--Gamora wakes to a beating.

 _Another._ Garbled, burning, her head pounds with panic and pain. _Not another, you little fool_ \--

No.

Not quite.

There’s a different quality to these blows.

“You betray me--”

These voices.

“--steal my money--”

A heavy, meaty _thwack_ : a fist driven into the pit of someone’s belly. A fist connecting with flesh. Her sister’s body made different sounds. After the first few years she was more than half metal; synthskin and wires wrapped around a voice box. Nebula creaked, splintered, groaned. The live currents beneath her skin sparked off each other, scorching.

Through it all she never let a real cry pass her lips.  

Another blow (Not the second, surely. It must be the fourth, or the fifth.) sinks home to the same target. The target lets out a roar on her huff of expelled breath. A cry that’s trying to be a roar, more accurately. There’s too much pain in it. And it’s choked off, far too soon, with another punch.

“Stop it! Leave her alone!”

Gamora almost chokes on her own shout. It flounders in a throat parched dry as a bone, and in a mouth not used to saying such things. To resisting out loud.

“When I picked you up as a kid--”

Quill will tell her later, with a smug assurance that belies the ice pack clutched to her ribs, that Gamora was screaming long before she was actually conscious.

 _You called for somebody else first,_ she’ll say, and leave it at that. Almost tactful. _But after the first couple punches it was all about me. Pete! Pete!_ Her smirk will melt into something almost shy. _You don’t get a hard-on for that kind of thing like I thought._

_Guess you’re not so cold, Queenie._

Gamora will hate her. Not enough to kill her, and not (gods all damn it) enough to keep herself from smiling back.

“I saved your life!”

“Oh, will you shut up about that? _God!_ ”

She sees them. She’s been watching them for ages. Watching. Not seeing. Noise needles Gamora’s skull, bursting inside it like a thousand glassy shards. The shards pierce her vision black and ripply--when it clears the figures smooth flat again, their lines and planes and angles open for Gamora to read. Sharp as fine-cut crystals.

Quill slumps by the hold’s rusting wall, held in place by two grimacing Ravagers. Their grimaces stretch even tighter as she lunges against them, face bruised and flushed red as a slap--Gamora does not lunge out at the same time, and she most certainly is not trying to reach for her, this uncultured thief with the preservation instincts of a newborn mouse--to snarl in the face of her captain.

He must be the captain. Gamora knows that stance anywhere. As wide-open as it is closed-off. Udonta’s feet stay planted firmly on the deck as Quill lurches close enough to spray her spit across his face. It’s in that moment of stillness, and in the set of his shoulders. This is not a new argument. In fact, Gamora would bet her life’s worth that it is their oldest.

“You stole me from my home.” Quill’s snarl rises back to a shout. “From my family--”

The stillness coiled in Udonta explodes. “You don’t give a damn ‘bout your Terra!” He makes as if to punch her again, then cuts the blow off at the last minute.

Quill curls her lip. “You getting tired, old man? Hey, don’t stop on my acc--”

He pins her by the shoulders, slams her back against the wall. “You’re scared,” Udonta growls. When Quill tries to wrestle him off he shoves her into the wall a third time, hard enough to crack her skull on a bolt. “Scared ‘cause you’re soft. Here.” He thumps his chest. “Right here!”

His hands grasp at her, fingers making fists at the collar of her jacket. Too close to her throat. They’re less than an inch apart now, all tooth and lip like a pair of wolves.

“You stole me,” Quill repeats, so softly that one of the Ravagers clutching at Gamora’s arms leans in closer to listen. It’s the only way she catches it. “You cursed me.”

Cold snakes up Gamora’s spine. They can’t go on like this much longer.

“Yondu!”

They’ll rip each other’s throats out.

“Listen to me,” Gamora continues, as loudly and steadily as her splitting head will let her. It’s like nobody hears her at first _(I could kill you all, I could paint the starways with your blood_ ), but she keeps on, yelling into this crowd of men, half of whom would probably add two and two together and come up with five. About Ronan, about the stone, about their galaxy and the hours they have before it implodes; she is the daughter of Thanos and they _will_ listen to her.

“We have to warn them.” Her voice catches, wobbles at the finish. Gamora prays it’ll help convince them. “Billions of people will perish.”

Entire races. Entire worlds. The men packed against her rustle, mumbling among themselves. Then, like clockwork, all eyes flick back to Udonta.

He’s let go of Quill’s jacket. Spares Gamora the sort of cold, hard look that might have frightened her, years ago, when she was a little girl building fairy huts in the mud of her homeworld. It doesn’t last long--Udonta whirls back on Quill, viper-fast.

“That what she’s been fillin’ your head with, girl? Sentiment?” He palms her cheek, hard enough that Quill’s red flush fades to white. “Eatin’ away your brain like maggots?” Udonta lunges in. He grabs her face with both hands, thumbs digging into her cheeks, forcing her to meet his eyes. Gamora’s blood runs cold. These two idiots will rip each other to pieces as the galaxy collapses around them.

Quill bends forward.

It’s a split-second, a flash, more of a melting than a movement, but Gamora sees. She sees how Quill’s anger...well, it doesn’t fade away. It retreats, sinks from her eyes and back into her skin; she leans toward Udonta, holding her eyes to his. A signal passes between them, unspoken.

He drops his hands and steps back, shaking his head. “That’s it.”

Gamora knows better.

She plays her part, anyhow, wailing “No!” when the red-tipped arrow whistles to Quill’s throat, staying silent while she and Udonta play the crowd, matching the captain glare for glare at just the right moment and spitting out the words everyone wants to hear.

“Ronan’s vulnerable.” She can’t look away from the arrow, how it hovers a pinprick away from the hollow of Quill’s throat. “More than he knows.”

“What do you say, old man?” Quill ignores it, her eyes sparking, her grin the perfect mix of insolent and hopeful. “You and me taking down marks side-by-side one last time, huh?”

Tension spools out between them. Udonta holds it for a moment.

Two.

Quill gulps.

He laughs. “Always did have a way of coverin’ that ass, Red.”

And the arrow drops. The rest of the crew laughs along--not all of them, maybe, but enough. Gamora yanks away from her two captors (one of the two, a gray-haired man who turns out to be the owner of the almost-melodious voice, claps her shoulder and grunts, “Thank ye, lass,” before melding into the crowd) and watches. Udonta throws an arm around Quill, the father welcoming home his prodigal son (it seems impossible, even with Quill being very clearly female, that this man could have a daughter). Quill falls against him, oozing suitable amounts of gratitude. She loops her arm under his, and, for the exactly correct span of seconds, squeezes back.

Gamora wonders if she knows. Then again, maybe the other Ravagers can’t read the way Quill stoops to keep her head level with Yondu’s, or don’t care to. Hah. Gamora doubts she’s the only one who sees. It’s in their moves, in the way they read the room as one, in the way Quill leans all her weight against him and in the way Udonta lets her. In their anger, too.

“I saw the bounty you put out for me,” Quill says now. “‘Build: Sturdy’?” She jabs his side with her elbow. “Who the hell you calling sturdy, big guy?”

What she wouldn’t have given. Gamora stays at the edge of the room, alone as the crew knots together, drawn in by Quill’s jokes and Udonta’s laughter. She wasn’t stupid; she knew who Thanos was from the beginning. It didn’t stop her dreaming.

She was only a child.

_Weren’t we all._

Only looking for a bit of closeness. And knowing, all the while, that she’d never get it.

It’s almost a relief when Rocket arrives, ready to blow a hole through the ship.

+

“Gam!”

“Hush!”

“ _GAM!_ ”

“Ugh, you monster!” Gamora tugs her drool-crusted, soup-spotted tunic over her head so fast it nearly rips. “I’m coming!”

There’s a corner of the swirling black ceiling that slicks back to form a spout once every three days. Whenever they step under the spout it blasts them with icy-cold water. It feels like what Gamora imagines being trapped in a hailstorm must (there were plenty of storms on her homeworld, but no hail). It’s also the only way they can possibly keep themselves clean, and, what with the Brat and her single diaper, that’s become a bigger priority than Gamora ever could have predicted.

“Up!” her sister demands as soon as she ducks, shuddering, under the stream.

Gamora bats her hands away. “Not yet.”

There’s no soap or shampoo. She takes care of her hair as best she can, scrubbing it between her fingers. She bends down and flicks the sodden waves until the Brat grabs for them. When she starts to giggle Gamora scoops her up. She holds her sister tight to her chest while the freeze rains down on them both.

It’s been easier to shower since their brother left. He wouldn’t step near the water--it would have hurt his ear too much, like most things did--but Gamora never felt right stripping herself in front of him. Undressing the Brat where he could see felt even worse, and there was no place in the room, really where he couldn’t see. None of them would turn their backs on each other, even for this.

With only a few minutes of water left Gamora sets the Brat down, shoves her out of the stream, and bolts herself, soaking, then scrubbing, their clothes in the last few spurts. The Brat stomps behind her, her fat round feet splatting in the puddles.

“Don’t eat that.” Gamora doesn’t turn her head. “If you do I’ll eat you.”

“Can’t,” the Brat says mutinously.

Gamora wrings out her tunic. “Let’s make a bet.”

She hears a clatter as the splintered chip of rock drops to the ground. The Brat stomps harder and closer, just shy of kicking Gamora in the back.

She bites down on the urge to grab the creature by her neck. They’re getting soup and bread as usual, three times a day (only two bowls now, and that’s how they knew for certain he wasn’t coming back). As usual, the Brat wants none of it. She’ll eat when Gamora glares at her, or shouts, or covers her mouth until she swallows. Apparently, she prefers licking the walls and sucking on the lumps of rock that have crumbled off to actual nourishment.

Gamora can’t fight a battle over every meal.

She _can’t_.

At the next one she tries a different tack.

They’re still shivering, wrapped in thin, scratchy blankets off the cots while their clothes dry. The bowl steams in Gamora’s hands, slopped full of hot salt broth. She squeezes her fingers to the rim, drawing in as much warmth as she can before setting it down between them.

“Sit down.”

The Brat ignores her.

Every muscle in Gamora’s face cracks as she smiles. “Fine, then, don’t. More for me.” She lifts the bowl to her lips and sips the skim of fat off the top.

The Brat’s too busy stumping at the hem of her blanket to notice.

“But if you don’t Father’ll be angry.”

The Brat looks up.

Gamora smacks her lips.

“Who.” It’s not a question. Nothing close.

“Thanos.” Gamora settles the bowl in her lap. “Our father.”

“No.” The Brat whirls on her so fast that she almost trips on the blanket, eyes round and furious. “ _Not_.”

Gamora bites her lip. Thanos killed her world. Cracked her cousins’ bones like eggshells beneath his feet. Her words should claw inside her, turn her inside-out. They should make her hate herself. And yet, and yet, she was so full of hate, bursting with it, leaking it from her seams, all rage and bitterness and fury, all fight, and when it came down to it, when she saw what it came down to, when she saw her brother’s face as they dragged him away--she can’t keep the fight in her. Can’t keep the rage burning. She saw hers reflected in her brother’s eyes, she sees it reflected in her sister’s eyes, and she knows--she knows it will destroy her. It will burn her to ash and leave her sister all alone.

Her sister stomps her foot. Her mouth stretches wide, wet as her eyes. “Gam,” she spits. “No!”

She makes her voice low and hard. As hard as she can. “He is our father, and if he sees you’re not eating, if he sees it’s making you weak, he’ll take you away from me and he’ll break you in half and smash your head and we’ll never see each other again. Never.”

The Brat’s glare cuts her. Gamora reaches for her anyway. She does not flinch when her sister lurches away.

She doesn’t.

“We’re not friends.” Those are the words she must hold to. Forever. She curses herself for letting them become a lie. “But I’ll protect you. I’ll protect you with everything I have, only it won’t matter--No, no, listen to me!” She grabs the Brat’s arm, wrenching it until her sister turns back to her with a screech. “It won’t matter if you don’t protect yourself.”

She squeezes her, pulls her even closer; Gamora doesn’t care if she hurts her--there’s no way she could hurt the Brat as much as Thanos can, no way to make her know this without hurting her. “He’ll kill you if you don’t protect yourself. Understand?”

The Brat’s glare has gone watery. The breath hitches in her chest.

Gamora presses her face to hers. “Tell me you understand!”

A nod. A bob of the head, at least. It might be because Gamora forgot herself and shook the Brat a little, but she’ll take it. She has no other choice. She lets her sister’s arm drop, sits back. “Good. Now eat the soup.”

The Brat starts crying as she does. Slow, seething tears. It’s not the first time she’s cried today, or the first time she’s cried in an hour. Gamora should be immune to it by now. She isn’t, yet all she can do is sit there, watching her sister’s tears blubber down into the already salty broth. If she hushes the Brat or tries to hug her, all she’ll remember later is the comfort. Not the lesson.

A distraction, though. Will that help?

“You need a new name.”

“No,” her sister snuffles into the soup.

“I can’t keep calling you ‘the Brat’,” Gamora says bluntly. “And I don’t know your old one. Do you?”

“No.”

Gamora thinks. The Brat takes another sip, gags, and spits it back into the bowl. Then tries blowing her nose into it.

“Nebula,” she decides.

The Brat stops her industrious snorting long enough to direct her glower upwards. “Stupid,” she declares.

“No it’s not.” The more Gamora talks, the more she feels the threat of her own tears wearing off. Bit by bit. “It’s what I was going to name my baby, once I had one.”

The glower darkens. “No.”

“Yes!”

A silence, spooled out. Pulled tight between them.

“Really,” Gamora says. “I was.”

“Stupid,” says her sister, though not quite so sharply, this time. Their eyes meet, and there’s no smile in either of them, but, by the same token, there is no rage. Not for now. Slowly--ever so slowly--Nebula bends her head to gulp another mouthful of soup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rewriting the scene aboard the _Eclector_ gave me an excuse to do one of my favorite things: watch a scene over and over and over again in order to memorize the emotional beats. Hopefully no one minds that I switched around some of the dialogue and glossed over a lot of the more plot-focused parts; I figured this scene should be more about the emotions than the plot of the film.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Needless to say, I didn't plan on having such a long wait between chapters; this section was just a bear to write. If any of you wonderful, patient people are still waiting to see how this one turns out, I hope you enjoy!

She falls.

Gamora reaches for her as if there’s hope; Gamora screams. But there is no help for her, and there’s no hope, and Nebula falls.

 _She’s alive. She survived. We both did._ It’s cold comfort at the best. False hope at the worst. There’s an art to living without fear or hate, an art to _living,_ as opposed to roaming the galaxy for your next kill. Gamora knows she won’t master it, anymore than Nebula will, but at least…

(She shouldn’t admit it. Honestly, she shouldn’t even think it. It’s too dangerous for her—and everyone else.)

...At least she has friends to stand by her side. _Family_ , she told Quill, and though Gamora doesn’t quite believe herself, not now, she thinks she might. In time. Of course, in time she might also stop hating her sister. But what’s that chirpy little inanity Quill’s so fond of spouting?

_You can’t have it all, baby._

Exactly.

The first night after the Battle of Xandar, Gamora can’t sleep. She doesn’t try to, pacing every corner of the suite handed off to her like a consolation prize. ( _Thanks for the galaxy, sorry about your sister,_ Quill quipped when she first saw it. They were both still trembling with the aftershock of containing the Infinity Stone. Gamora almost ripped her face off.) City lights swim behind the sheet glass windows like fish, swinging their multi-colored lures through the dark.  

 _You idiot,_ she thinks. As if her sister’s face will materialize behind the glass as well, screaming back at her, twisted ugly with pain and fury.

 _Bitch._ In the training arena, that was Nebula’s barb of choice; Gamora’s lost count of the times she accepted it, stone-faced, while her sister writhed, choking, under her. _Bitch!_

 _My sister,_ she thinks. She paces harder. Her boots stomp into the ankle-deep green carpet while the dimmed bedside lamp flickers, bluish. It’s like being trapped at the bottom of the sea.

Back then, she sometimes thought Nebula must have come from an ocean planet. Gamora can’t remember why. It might’ve all come down to the color of her sister’s skin, or the way her eyes sometimes went dead and hungry like a glowshark’s.

Her skin, soft, sticky with drool, pressed to Gamora’s. Her eyes blinking shut, nestled close in the dark.

_My baby._

It festers, rots underneath Gamora’s breastbone, blooms up the walls of her gut; she feels her skin softening, splitting with it. _I gave you a chance. I held out my hand. Why—_

The knock almost sends her vaulting through the window. Gamora freezes, closes her eyes, sucks down the longest of breathes.

“What do you want?”

Not wanting Quill dead is not the same as wanting Quill around.

“Oh, I don’t know,” the thief snaps. Insulated panels of Xandarian oak are not, unfortunately, enough to muffle her voice. “A good night’s sleep after saving the world too much to ask for?”

Gamora decides to go for her entire head this time.  

“ _—_ like Groot in lumberjack boots...okay, not like Groot _now_ ...shit _—_ ”

She throws open the door. “Quill!”

The thief’s mouth snaps shut. Her heavy eyes are shadowed, her hair a crown of rat’s nests.  

“Is there a point to this?” Gamora seethes. “Or do you just want me to listen to you talk?”

Her mouth opens again. Naturally. Gamora swears she’ll make whoever shuts it for more than five seconds a very, very wealthy man. Or woman. Or being. Or assassin.

“Family trouble?” She crosses the threshold without asking. “Hell, Queenie, why didn’t you just say so?”

+

She’s dying.

The Brat _—_ her sister _—_ Nebula. Nebula is dying. Nebula’s dying, and Gamora has no idea what to do.

They have been locked in this room for fourteen days. Nebula’s been screaming, almost non-stop, for three of those days. She won’t eat. She won’t suck rocks. She won’t drink; she won’t budge from their bed unless Gamora carries her. Her skin burns. It’s like lugging around a live coal, but if Gamora puts her down, if she leaves her, the breath will woosh out of Nebula all at once and she’ll be gone.

“No,” she snarls, arms full, their skins pasted together with her sweat (Nebula’s dry as a bone). “You’re not leaving me. Don’t you _dare_.”

“Gam,” her sister moans, “Gam, Gam, Gam,” without stopping.

“I’m here,” Gamora mutters. “I’m here, I’m here.” The black walls and the black floors swirl and morph around her. They’ve fallen into a black hole, a vast pit of darkness where she hears nothing but her sister’s screams, feels nothing but the rub of their skins together. Nebula’s skin, she’s just learned, is like the very finest sandpaper, scraping hers away bit by bit, day by day. The skin about Gamora’s shoulders and collarbone is wearing so thin that she wakes up every morning expecting the bones to jab through.

Every morning, she wakes up expecting a dead cold lump beside her.

 _If you go, I go._ She doesn’t say it out loud. She can’t. She must be strong. She must be hard and cruel for both of them, she must—

“I’m here.” She drenches them both in the icy shower. Nebula shivers in between screeches, strings of green snot crusted over lip, salty tear-tracks crusted over her cheeks.

“I’m here.” She paces every corner of this awful room, every night. When Nebula does sleep, she’s restless, babbling and moaning, arms thrashing out, fingers knotting in Gamora’s hair.

“I’m here.”

“I’m here,” she screams, her throat rough, her eyes full of red-hot grit. “I’m right _here_.”

Nebula howls. Gamora howls back, “Shut up!”

She hums the songs already slipping out of her head like the stroke of her mother’s fingers, the melody of her voice in the deep dark of the night. _The moon is the face of the night, the moon is the pearl of the sea…_

It’s a test. Another test. She is so gods-awful tired of tests.

And she’ll never know if what she sees tonight is a dream, caught in the few split-seconds her eyelids drooped shut, or something much stranger.

Warm winds ruffles through Gamora's hair, swollen with rain. Red mud oozes up between her toes. She crouches in her grandmother’s yard, which backs out onto the great mudflats. Beyond the mudflats lies the blue haze of the inland sea, and beyond the sea, the city. Even miles away, Gamora spots the glassy shine of the towers beneath the sun, catches the faint whine of speeders zipping through the air. Over her shoulder, just out of reach, her aunt is roasting something in the kitchen. Her mother and her grandmother are arguing. The air smells of mud and damp and sizzling meat.

Her sister crouches beside her, stirring something in the mud. Gamora bends closer, and sees she’s playing with rocks: blue, purple, green, and yellow. Swollen like ripe fruit, glittering like jewels.

Nebula picks up the purple one, rubbing it clean on her tunic.

“If you eat that—” Gamora doesn’t sound like herself. Like someone she used to know, maybe. Ages ago. “—I’ll eat you.”

Nebula bites into the rock. Juice overflows, dribbling down her chin. She takes another bite, then holds the rock out.

“Try,” she says. Her scowl is the same, but her voice rings clear as a bell.

It smells sticky. Gamora grabs it, ready to drop the stone back in the mud...it smells sticky, and ripe, and very, very sweet. She bends her head—she’s only going to smell it one more time, then—and takes a bite.

The mudflats dissolve, if they were ever there to begin with. Gamora stumbles, the Brat burning in her arms. _They’re_ dissolving, she thinks. She’s never been so tired in her life.

The thought: a single spark, a sting in her muddled head. _I’m not dying here._

_This is a test._

The Brat shifts, whining. She nuzzles her face over Gamora’s collarbone.

_I won’t die here._

“I’m here,” Gamora whispers. Her voice trembles, her head drops; her lips brush over her sister’s skull. “I’m here.”

+

“Hold up.” Quill’s face is flushed a shade or two brighter than her hair. “You’ve never gotten drunk before?”

“Never!” Gamora shouts. “It’s not, uh, not—”

“Doesn’t really go well with assassin-ing?”

“Yes!” She’s lost all her words, and doesn’t care. The lights of the city are very beautiful. The room around her is very bright.

“Huh.” Quill scoops another bottle (this one sloshing with something pink) out of the mini bar. “I guess that makes you a hangover virgin.”

“I am a virgin,” Gamora agrees.  

She swears the thief hides a smile. Just like with the words, Gamora doesn’t care.

“This one’s my favorite.” Pink liquid slops into her glass. “Yondu always used to get on my back about it, but I was looking for an extra comlink in the captain’s quarters one time and he had a bottle of it hidden in his desk.” Quill’s smile is almost fond. “Then I was stupid enough to bring it up the next time I got pissed at him and he literally kicked my ass. Good times.”

Gamora slurps it over the sticky rim of her glass. This time Quill doesn’t bother hiding her smile, and even laughs, but there’s no bite to it, and that, Gamora already knows, is a rare thing indeed.

“It’s bangin’, right?”

“Mmm,” Gamora agrees. It tastes like rose petals and the faint flush of color you see when the sun sets, pink-orange-peach-gold. It evaporates on her tongue like dew. She throws back the last few drops and sets her glass on the table.

“Udonta,” Gamora says. Her tongue is starting to feel thick. Saturated.

Quill wipes her mouth. “What about him?”

“You said he was your family.”

“Closest thing to.” She doesn’t mention what Gamora told her afterwards. Gamora is too drunk to worry about this. “So?”

“So,” says Gamora...is her room spinning? _“ So_ —you hate him.”

She feels a hand cup her elbow; Quill’s circled back around the table. “Easy, princess,” the thief mutters, though she’s stumbling herself. “Yeah,” she says a little louder. “I mean, most of the time, yeah. What’s that got to do with anything?”

What indeed. Gamora remembers the split-instant in the _Eclector_ ’s hold, the bow of Quill’s shoulders as she slumped forward, the tension in Udonta’s as he held her steady.

_Easy, girl._

_Easy._

Gamora closes her eyes. “I hated my sister,” she says. Behind her eyelids the words blink like stars. _“Hated_ her.”

When she opens them again, Quill is arguing.

“Yeah, yeah. We’re beloved by the whole damn Nova Corps now. Feel free to try!”

A spatter of static and words, only a few of which Gamora can make out. “Two-timin’”, “ungrateful”, and “kill you” seem to be the main ones.

Slowly and very carefully, Gamora props herself up on her elbows. “Udonta?”

The comlink splutters. Quill groans. “Now you woke her up. Thanks, Gramps. Thanks a whole fucking ton.”

Gamora looks down. She is, in fact, on the bed. The blanket’s slid down from where it was tucked around her shoulders. Her boots have been tugged off. The lights of the city have dimmed; a faint, watery pink builds in the sky. Her head feels as if it’s been split open. Gamora looks up.

Quill’s curled in a chair she’s dragged over to the bedside, the comlink settled in her lap. She huffs, spinning it so that the grainy projection faces the bed.

“Say good morning, Gamora.”

“Good morning.” Her brain throbs, forcing her skull apart from the inside. All Gamora can make out from the projection is a blue blur.

“You drunk?” it snaps.

“I am,” she says solemnly. “I am a...a…” she looks to Quill for help.

“A hangover virgin? Not anymore you’re not.”

“No more.” Gamora nods. As soon as she does, the entire planet spins and her purpose in life grows crystal clear. She throws the blanket off, lurching for the bathroom.

The crackling murmur of Udonta’s voice dogs her all the while; Gamora hacks out vomit, warm and sticky-sour, for what feels like at least five minutes before forcing down a mouthful of cold water. She doesn’t bother looking at herself in the mirror, just slumps back into the bedroom where the two have kept up their bickering.

“You are ridiculous,” she grumbles, sinking into the mattress.

“Who?” Quill doesn’t look especially well, either. Gamora can just make out the bags beneath her eyes, swollen, shadowed like bruises.

“Both of you.” Gamora yanks at the blanket. She didn’t drink enough to forget what happened yesterday. Enough to soften the sharpest edges, yes, but what’s done is done. “He fought alongside us,” she mumbles, flicking one hand in the comlink’s direction. “Why would he kill you?”

They’re any number of reasons why he would, truth be told. None of them seem to apply here, though Gamora can’t, for the life of her, decide why—so maybe it is the drink talking. All she knows with any certainty is that she doesn’t fear Udonta anymore. No doubt she should. But she doesn’t.

Their jabber picks up again as soon as she’s tried to smother her headache in the overstuffed pillow.

“Still mopin’ over that bald gal?” the comlink mutters.

“Her sister,” Quill corrects. Her voice is sharp, but with something softer swimming beneath its surface that Gamora suspected before now, even if her head’s too muddled to place it.

“Not like she ain’t gonna turn up no more. Scum rises.”

“Yeah. You’d know all about that.”

A huff. A crackling silence. “And you best be watchin’ your back, Red.”

Quill snorts.

“Don’t give me that. You broke the code. Think I’m gonna be able to keep all them jackasses off your trail?”

“I’m not—”

“You stiffed us all, girl. Some of these boys here, they’re out for your blood.”

“I—” she begins again.

The comlink shuts off.

 _“Asshole,”_ Quill breathes.

Gamora’s headache gets no better when the thief hurls her gadget against the opposite wall, or when the exactly-firm-enough foam of the mattress sinks another few inches as a heavy weight drops down beside her.

“You don’t mind, do you?” Quill smells of familiar things—booze, sweat, not a little regret. She turns so Gamora only sees the thicket of her hair, punches a pillow into shape. Her shoulders hitch up for one perilous moment, then settle.

Gamora grumbles. It’s almost daybreak, though. And, honestly, she hasn’t got the energy to.

+

“Up,” she whimpers, her voice a dried reed’s rattle. _“ Gam._ Up.”

“Stay here,” Gamora answers, batting away the hands that reach for her, the silk-fine grate of her sister’s skin, the rub of once-plump cheeks starting to collapse in for lack of food and water. Two days. Nebula hasn’t drunk a drop in two days.

 _Put it away_ , she tells herself. _Put it all away._  

“I’m right here,” she calls all the same, edging for the door while Nebula moans, thrashes weakly on the bed. “I’ll be right back.

“Promise.”

The door is as black as the rest of the room and it is heavy and it is locked and it has never felt like any kind of opening. A breath lodges in Gamora’s throat. Breaks loose like a sob. She draws her arm back, swings, and smacks the flat of her hand to the black stone.

 _Bang._ To her ears, its louder than a gunshot.

“Gam—”

 _Bang._ It echoes.

“She needs help.” Her voice trembles; she doesn’t bother shouting for he will hear her. This was his plan all along, Gamora thinks, to break her. She won’t break. She may bend, maybe, maybe—

“Gam!”

—She will never break.

“Take her. I can’t save her.” And now Gamora does scream, or tries to. After so many endless days, it’s nothing more than a hoarse croak. _"_ _Take her!"_

And now she is running back to the bed, now she is scooping her sister into her arms, now she is squeezing her, breathing in her sick, sour scent, now she is hissing, “Be strong, be strong, you have to be strong,” and Nebula is wailing, bucking, but this is the last time, she will never hold her sister again, she may never see her sister again; alone it’s better to be alone, “You’re not dying here, do you hear me, you’re not dying here,” they’re coming they’re coming Gamora squeezes her arms even tighter and she kisses her sister’s head kisses her flailing fist they’re coming they’re coming no other choice no other way my sister my sister no other way they’re coming my sister—

The door opens.

Before they even begin, Gamora knows she’ll remember her sister’s screams for the rest of her life.

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another title swiped from "Surrender" by Cheap Trick.
> 
> You can find me on [ tumblr](https://mapleymood.tumblr.com/) and [ dreamwidth](https://maplemood.dreamwidth.org//). My tumblr tag for inspiration related to this series is [ here](https://mapleymood.tumblr.com/tagged/girl%21peter).


End file.
